Fear, Uncertainty, Attachment and Mindfulness

It is in our nature to be fearful of uncertainty and loss (of status, money, plans). It is in our nature to be attached to things we have created, even if they are only ideas and prototypes.

The Lean Startup provides us with techniques to test our assumptions against reality at an early stage, when our attachment to them is relatively young and before we have invested time, energy and money into realizing them.

Since we are so fearful of loss, the longer we allow an idea to develop without being challenged, the more difficult it becomes to face up to testing them — the potential loss has grown massively with the investments we have made.

This is the central failing of countless doomed projects: having proceeded without testing the core assumptions, there is now too much invested to take the risk of facing reality in the present. If we look, it might all be lost! So there is only work, moving forward to ultimate failure.

Confronting reality is much more of an emotional challenge than a rational one. We hate loss, and we hate uncertainty, and our reactions to fear come from our emotional mind, not our rational one. Our emotions overwhelm our ability think clearly.

The practice of mindfulness is a tool which lets us detach, even a little, from our fears. It allows us to see fear and uncertainty without becoming overwhelmed by them. It gives our rational mind space to work.

These are some places where a practice of mindfulness may help you and your team, work with reality to build something that fits, that works, that meshes with the world as it is.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Frank Herbert, Dune. (yeah, I know. but it’s helped me over the years).

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1. Listening to a potential customer describe their “pain points”

As the customer describes their “pain points”, you realize that the product approach you had in mind doesn’t match their problems at all.

You’re uncomfortable because:

the work you have done coming up with your product assumptions is “wasted”

you will have to do more work to come up with a different assumption set

you are fearful that you may not be able to come up with any new ideas

you really liked the ideas you had and now you have to rework or discard them

the project just became more uncertain. you were hoping it would become more certain

You try and avoid reality by thinking things like:

this is not a representative custome

the customer is not telling me what they really do/thin

when they fully see what we are going to build, they will change their mind

Face reality. Listen to the customer.

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2. The results of an experiment come back.

Your new feature isn’t accepted at the rate you were hoping. Your signup rate is below the model you predicted.

You’re uncomfortable because:

the work you’ve done in spec’ing the feature so far (hopefully you haven’t actually built it) will be “wasted”

you were attached to the feature: it’s clever, innovative, elegant

the team really worked their butts off to build the prototype. They will be disappointed.

the release schedule assumes this feature. Reworking it may cause a slip. That might be embarrassing

you told your boss/your board/your investors/your mentor that this feature is a really good idea and you had high hopes for it

You try and avoid reality by thinking things like:

even though the numbers are less that we set as the lower bound, they’re still kinda OK

the feature is still a good idea, and there’s loads of ways we can improve the results as we go along

the team didn’t execute the experiment correctly (the sample was wrong, the questions weren’t the right ones)

the experiment didn’t really represent the feature (the colors were wrong, the fonts weren’t the right ones, it ran slower than the final version will)

You’re feeling:

fear of loss: you liked that feature, and you’ll have to drop or change it

fear of failure: you set expectations that the feature would be a step towards success

embarrassment: again, expectations!

shame: you let the team down

We really, really dislike and fear failure and loss (approximately twice as much as we anticipate gains) We will bend our thoughts significantly to avoid feeling it. Likewise embarrassment.

Take the short-term loss over the long-term (likely) loss of project failure.

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3. The team is building prototypes and testing them.

Time is ticking by and no code is being written.

You are uncomfortable because:

the team is still (still!) testing hypotheses, not building something! They should be building something!

you’re not showing any “progress” to your boss, investors, partners

you’re not really sure when this process will end — nobody seems to know

You try and avoid reality by thinking things like:

we should just start building something. anything. get it in front of somebody.

the team doesn’t understand the urgency of the real world! they are just spinning their wheels!!

the team doesn’t get the vision. if they did, they wouldn’t be testing everything — we’d be charging forward!